Internet crime unit slated for Dallas

DALLAS (AP) - New prosecution teams specializing in Internet crime will be put in place in Dallas and nine other U.S. cities to combat computer crimes.

The Computer Hacking and Intellectual Property Unit, also known as CHIP, "is really going to help our region," Assistant U.S. Attorney Erin Nealy Cox, who also prosecutes cybercrimes, told The Dallas Morning News.

"We're the only city in Texas with a CHIP unit and the only city in the Southwest."

The first CHIP unit went to San Francisco. Others will be established in Los Angeles, San Diego, Atlanta, Boston, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Seattle and Alexandria, Va.

Justice Department officials said the cities were chosen for the CHIP units because they have significant concentrations of high-tech industry that could become targets for computer intrusion.

"We're the only city in Texas with a CHIP unit and the only city in the Southwest."

Erin Nealy Cox, Assistant U.S. Attorney

Five men in four states used their home computers and the Internet to steal more than $1.5 million in long-distance services from telephone companies in 1995.

Though unintended, their actions helped Dallas become one of the cities receiving the government's special prosecution teams.

Four of the men have gone to prison for the thefts - largely from a Dallas firm - and the fifth remains a federal fugitive. Still, the computer crooks became minor footnotes in Internet history.

That's because an employee of the FBI's Dallas office reached into cyberspace and snatched one of the group's incriminating e-mail messages before it could arrive at its destination.

Federal officials revealed in 1999 that the quiet event in the Dallas investigation was the first in which law enforcement officials in this country successfully intercepted computer-to-computer messages simultaneously with their occurrence.

A court order had authorized the operation.

The case demonstrated the potential damage posed by computer criminals and a new level of expertise on the part of investigators, federal officials in Dallas said last week.